1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method of generating print data to be used in printing (color materials) onto a print medium on the basis of image data, a print data generation device that generates the print data by the method, and a printing apparatus including the device.
2. Related Art
To date, printing apparatuses (ink jet printers) that print color images by ejecting inks onto fabric products (print media) such as a T-shirt have been known. In such printing apparatuses, for instance, JP-A-2007-288773 describes the following technique (print data generation device). If the background color of a color image (e.g., yellow) is the same color as a base color that is the color of the print surface of a print medium (e.g., yellow), the background color of the color image is set to be a transparent color so as not to be printed. Since the background color of the color image is not printed, the amount of an ink (such as the amount of a yellow ink) used in printing the background color decreases.
However, in the technique (print data generation device) described in JP-A-2007-288773, if the background color of the color image is the same color as the base color of the print medium, it is possible to reduce the amount of the background-color ink to be used but not possible to reduce the amounts of inks to be used in printing colors similar to the background color. That is, it is possible to reduce the amount of an ink to be used in printing an input pixel having a shade value (such as an RGB value) equivalent to that of the background color, among pixels making up the color image, but not possible to reduce the amounts of inks to be used in printing input pixels having shade values close to that of the background color. With regard to these points, the technique (print data generation device) described in JP-A-2007-288773 can be further improved for reducing the amounts of inks to be used in printing.